Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

It’s like cloud providers are engaging in a cutthroat limbo contest as they continue to ask each other, "How low can you go?" As we noted last week, cloud providers seem to be engaging in a price war, but the truth is as price cuts happen, others simply follow suit. And it’s not just the big boys playing the game. Some of the small and midsize players are also reducing prices in what is quickly becoming the norm in the cloud computing space.

Take Caspio as a good example. The PaaS provider has announced a new pricing plan to removes the pay-per-usage model most cloud providers pride themselves on in favor of a "one price fits all" plan. Caspio, which provides a PaaS for custom business applications, has removed all caps on applications, users, storage and email messages within its new Standard pricing plan…

Grazed from Asustek. Author: PR Announcement.

Taiwan’s Asustek Computer (Asus) has announced that it will be partnering with the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) under the Ministry of Economic Affairs to establish a new cloud computing services marketplace.

The new platform, Taiwan Digital Mega Mall, will be set up to integrate Taiwan-based content providers, development tool providers and online content stores, and will initially be focused on providing content providers (publishers, game operators and software vendors) with the means to make their content digitally available. The offering will be initially focused on business to business sales, although Asus has confirmed that this will eventually expand to include business to consumer interactions…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Crowdsourced cloud developer CloudSpokes released a new cloud-based tool that automatically analyzes the build, quality and security of code to provide businesses and developers with insight into the stability of submitted code.

Thurgood, the company’s software development tool, accepts all coding languages and leverages Cloudbees’ Jenkins Enterprise and Checkmarx security and vulnerability scan, aiming to provide automated quality and security review of submitted software development packages, the company said…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Actian has launched its a new elastic cloud platform that was designed to integrate cloud and on-premises applications while providing robust data quality and other data services. The DataCloud platform and another new offering, the ParAccel Big Data Analytics Platform, were built using acquired technology from ParAccel, Pervasive Software and Versant.

The vendor is focused on the Big Data analytics space, but with DataCloud, it is aiming to provide "invisible integration" to provide a variety of data and application integration services in the cloud. Customers get a choice of three tiers:…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Steve Player.

IT professionals often view cloud computing as a challenge to on-premises implementations. While this is true, the cloud also provides the financial planning and analysis (FP&A) function with a ready way to rapidly deploy advanced planning approaches. Read on to discover how cloud computing enables rapid FP&A technology deployment and find responses to common objections to using the cloud.

The need for rapid deployment in FP&A

The FP&A department in most organizations faces tremendous demands because the planning function serves as the organizational brain. It reads inputs of current performance in light of a changing external environment, constantly develops evolving courses of action to transform current capabilities into what the expected future requires, and tries to keep the organization on the path to prosperity…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Deney Dentel.

Cloud computing can simply be described as computing based on the internet. In the past, people depended on physical computer storage or servers to run their programs. However, with the introduction of cloud computing, people as well as business enterprises can now access their programs through the internet. This kind of computing is rapidly growing in popularity and especially with small business enterprises. To understand why so many businesses are making the transition to cloud computing, let’s have a look at some of its benefits.

Cost savings of the cloud

Opting for the cloud helps a business save money in several ways. For instance, it eliminates the necessity to invest in storage hardware and other physical infrastructure like servers. Besides, a business does not need to hire technical personnel to maintain and service the infrastructure. With cloud service, you pay after certain duration of time depending on the plan you opt for. All you do is use the virtual storage space without giving much attention to the actual infrastructure…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Zack Whittacker.

The cloud has suffered a bad rap as of late, with Brussels-based bureaucrats calling on a new European cloud away from the U.S. in efforts to avoid PRISM-related spying. But stateside, where U.S. law applies to U.S. clouds and nobody seems to care because "that’s just how it goes," everything is great — particularly for the U.S. federal government, which certainly doesn’t have to worry about spying on itself.

So says the latest research from IDC, which puts U.S. federal cloud spending in the "through the roof" category. According to the figures, private clouds are leading the way — away from existing networks and infrastructure in a bid to enhance security and wedge a divide between corporate data and government data…

Grazed from HeroldOnline. Author: Editorial Staff.

Infinitely Virtual, a leading provider of Cloud Server computing services, today announced support for Windows 2012 and Windows 8, a move that marks the completion of its VMware vSphere® 5.1 upgrade cycle. The company recently announced its implementation of vSphere 5.1, a comprehensive update of the world’s most widely deployed virtualization platform. The foundation of the VMware vCloud Suite, vSphere 5.1 includes more than 100 enhancements and new features aimed at delivering optimum performance across all applications.

Among the vSphere 5.1 enhancements is support for Windows 2012 and Windows 8. vShield Manager 5.1, a virtual appliance that is part of the vSphere upgrade, is integral to that support, providing firewall protection, traffic analysis, and network perimeter services to protect the virtual infrastructure. vShield Manager — the centralized management component of vShield — is used to monitor and push configurations to vShield App, vShield Endpoint, and vShield Edge implementations…

Grazed from NYTimes.  Author: Quentin Hardy.

Michael S. Dell is fighting a battle over a company that many say is doomed.Though his namesake company revolutionized the PC business, it missed the consumer shift to smartphones and tablets, and also missed the move of corporate computing to data centers and cloud-based networks. By trying to take the business private, Mr. Dell, in a sense, is trying to turn back the clock.

“Information technology moves faster than anything — even the worlds of fashion and retail don’t change as much,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale University who said he had a Dell investment. “How do you keep the revolution forever young?”…

Grazed from TechRadar.  Author: Kane Fulton.

Fujitsu Laboratories claims to have developed a new infrastructure-as-a-service platform technology for its data centres that can configure and deploy physical servers on-demand on a per-user basis within 10 minutes.

While virtual IaaS servers are typically deployed on-demand, physical IaaS deployments can take several days after being ordered by the customer because service operators need to manually install servers and software in the data centre…